Downtown Lansing gets new, cashless parking meters

There are fewer of these in downtown Lansing after city officials updated three downtown blocks with cashless meters.University of Iowa (http://www.uiowa.edu/~ptimes/issues03-04/winter03-04/parking.html)

LANSING, MI – Some visitors to the state's capital city
will no longer have to carry a pocketful of change after city officials
implemented pay-by-credit card parking in a stretch of the downtown area.

The 100 block of North Washington Square now sports
parking meters that accept credit cards, said Bob Johnson, head of the city's
Planning & Neighborhood Development department.

On the 200 and 300 blocks of North Washington Square,
patrons can also pay for parking via credit or debit card at permanent pay
stations.

Each space on those blocks will have a designated number,
Johnson said, and patrons can pay for their time at any of the eight pay
stations on those two city blocks.

As an added bonus, the time limit for parking on the 200
and 300 blocks of North Washington Square have been increased to three hours,
to better accommodate Lansing Community College students using the spaces to
attend classes.

The new meters and pay stations were installed Thursday,
Johnson said.

While the city purchased the pay stations at a cost of
about $8,000 each, the new meters are a pilot project.

Depending on the utilization, they could be permanent, he
said.

"If all goes well, we'll expand the pay-by-credit parking,"
Johnson said, but only in the immediate downtown area.

"We can't automate the entire system due to the cost of
the new meter heads and the transaction costs" charged for each credit and
debit payment, Johnson said.

The new pay stations and meter heads offer the
convenience of cashless paying, like that available to city-owned parking
ramps, but with the location and ease of metered spaces, he added.

Staff was on site Thursday to assist patrons in
using the new systems.